Can you believe it's already been 10 years since "JK Wedding Entrance Dance" became one of the biggest viral videos to date? If you're scratching your head and wondering what I'm talking about, let's jog that memory ASAP.
Jillian Peterson and Kevin Heinz surprised their wedding guests (with a little help from their bridesmaids and groomsmen) by playing Chris Brown's song "Forever" as they did a fun choreographed dance down the aisle. After being uploaded to YouTube to share with family and friends, "JK Wedding Entrance Dance" went crazy viral. It was so popular The Office spoofed during Jim and Pam's wedding episode. To date, the original video has been 98 million times.
So, where are Jill and Kevin today? Minnesota Public Radio reached out to the viral couple to find out. Kevin told MPR that the only reason they shared it on YouTube in the first place was because the file was too big to send over email. Instead, they posted it in order to share the link. "It was a huge file. It was really a practical decision more than anything, which is funny in retrospect," Kevin said. The rest, as we know, is viral video history.
Jill and Kevin are still married and use the video's popularity to raise money for various charities. Originally they donated to Sheila Wellstone Institute, which helps survivors of domestic violence, as "penance" for using Chris Brown's song. Since then, Jill has launched her own charity called The Violence project, which "provides training and researches criminal justice issues."
"It was important for us to redirect funds and attention that way," Jill explained to MPR. "We knew we wanted to shut our participation down, move on to law school and grad school, and this was a way, it gave people something to do. If you wanted to be engaged with the video, you could go here, you could donate, you could feel like you're a part of something bigger. And, (it was) a way to harness all the good positive energy we were getting from people. Let's try to harness and do something with it and it was this."
Kevin currently works as an immigration attorney in St. Paul, Minnesota, while Jill has a career as an assistant professor of criminology at Hamline University. They also have three kids: Baron, Calvin, and Vivian. Their oldest son, Baron, told MPR he prefers The Office's version of the viral dance. A fun fact Kevin and Jill reveal on their website: they had no idea the wildly popular NBC sitcom was going to reference their wedding entrance. They found out while watching the episode live.
Photo: Getty